Today’s format is a little bit different, in that the visual art and music are part of a singular video piece which also prominently features dance—so, multiple media all wrapped up into one.
Every year in the church calendar, December 28 commemorates the Massacre of the Innocents—the boys of Bethlehem slain by agents of the state, deployed by Herod, who feared the perceived threat they posed. The story is told in Matthew 2:16–18 and quotes the prophet Jeremiah:
A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.
While the remembrance marks this ancient event specifically, the church also takes the occasion to pray for present-day innocents who have been victimized by the powerful. For example, the collect (succinct prayer) for this day from the Book of Common Prayer reads:
We remember today, O God, the slaughter of the holy innocents of Bethlehem by King Herod. Receive, we pray, into the arms of your mercy all innocent victims; and by your great might frustrate the designs of evil tyrants and establish your rule of justice, love, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The artists of today’s piece, made in 2019, confront the unjustified killing of Black men in America by police. They do not make the explicit connection to Herod’s massacre, but I do, as I hear, in the many Black mothers who have lost their children to state violence, Rachel weeping and refusing to be comforted. And I see Herod-like rulers who want to silence those wails and reverse the progress made in awareness and reform.
LOOK & LISTEN: The Ritual of Being, a site-specific dance performance by T. Lang in front of the Mothers March On mural by Sheila Pree Bright, 2019
The 2010s was a decade of racial reckoning in America. In response to neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman’s killing of the unarmed Black teen Trayvon Martin and subsequent acquittal, the Black Lives Matter movement was founded in 2013, demanding policing and criminal justice reform and the safety of marginalized Black communities. BLM activism and the continual miscarriages of racial justice that prompt it received ample media coverage all the way through the movement’s peak in 2020 with the murder of George Floyd. That coverage has lessened in the last few years, but the movement is still active, and mothers still bear the wound of their slain children.
In 2019, the lens-based artist Sheila Pree Bright, author of #1960Now: Photographs of Civil Rights Activists and Black Lives Matter Protests, brought together nine mothers who are fighting for justice for their boys whose lives were taken from them by police. She wanted to give them a safe space to talk, and to photograph them. The portrait Mothers March On depicts, from left to right, Tynesha Tilson (mother of Shali Tilson), Wanda Johnson (mother of Oscar Grant), Felicia Thomas (mother of Nicholas Thomas), Gwen Carr (mother of Eric Garner), Monteria Robinson (mother of Jamarion Robinson), Dr. Roslyn Pope (author of An Appeal for Human Rights), Dalphine Robinson (mother of Jabril Robinson), Patricia Scott (mother of Raemawn Scott), Montye Benjamin (mother of Jayvis Benjamin), and Samaria Rice (mother of Tamir Rice).
Sheila Pree Bright (American, 1967–), Mothers March On, 2019. Vinyl-print photo mural installed at 190 Pryor Street, Atlanta, Georgia, 30 × 60 ft. (9.1 × 18.3 m).
Carr, whose son died in the chokehold of an NYPD officer who ignored his cries of “I can’t breathe,” is the focal point of the image, with her arms outstretched and fingers spread. This body language connotes an offering of self to the cause of justice and a readiness to receive it. That her hands are open rather than clenched in a fist indicates unguardedness, while her planted feet indicate firmness.
The woman in glasses beside Carr is Roslyn Pope, who died in 2023. A mother to two daughters, she had not herself lost a child to police violence, but she was part of Mothers March On on account of her seminal civil rights work in Atlanta. In 1960, while serving as president of the student government at Spelman College, she drafted the manifesto An Appeal for Human Rights, announcing the formation of the Atlanta Student Movement, whose campaign of civil disobedience would contribute to the dissolution of racist Jim Crow laws across the region. In a 2020 interview for the sixtieth anniversary of the manifesto’s publication, Pope expressed concern that some of the students’ hard-fought gains were being eroded, telling the Associated Press, “We have to be careful. It’s not as if we can rest and think that all is well.”
The Mothers March On photographic project is about Black women who have witnessed the tragic loss of their children who have fallen to police brutality. . . . This project pays homage to the sacrifices, wisdom, and guidance of Black mothers as nurturers and protectors who are passing on a legacy of determination and love, showing how they are fierce and tender, protective and vulnerable, and strong and soft. I’m honoring the struggles of Black mothers, celebrating the beauty of their strength and resilience. These mothers continue to march on for Human rights for their children to bring attention to the urgent need for police reform and the systemic racism that continues to fuel police brutality against Black bodies since slavery.
Bright’s depiction . . . stresses Black mothers’ memory, determination, love, and corporeality. Through the repetition of standing figures, the portrait insists on the integrity of Black bodily form. The women speak back to lynching culture. With rose petals at their feet, like fallen bodies of their murdered sons, these mothers, on the front-lines of state violence, refuse to relent. They know who and what has been taken from them; they will never forget. . . .
Bright printed the portrait in large scale and pasted it on the side of a brick retail building at 190 Pryor Street in Atlanta, Georgia, near the Georgia State Capitol. Then, for ProtectYoHeART Day in Atlanta, she and the performance artist T. Lang collaborated on a video piece at that site, where T. Lang dances before the mural to the aching instrumental jazz piece “Alabama” by the saxophonist John Coltrane. (Coltrane wrote the music as a memorial for the four girls who were murdered by Ku Klux Klansmen at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963; learn more here.) Clothed in a fringe dress, T. Lang spins, jerks, reaches, heaves, throws herself against the wall, crouches, withers, bursts, climbs, pulls, and walks forward, movements of grief and struggle capped by resolve.
A temporary installation, the Mothers March On mural is no longer on Pryor Street.
I first learned about Sheila Pree Bright’s photography from a compelling series of hers that I saw at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, titled Young Americans. In it she invited people across the US between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five to pose with the American flag in whatever way they felt most comfortable. “My practice moves between documentary and conceptual work, from portraiture to constructed realities—always grounded in truth, history, and lived experience,” Bright says.
Gerard David (Netherlandish, ca. 1455–1523), The Nativity, early 1480s. Oil on wood, 18 3/4 × 13 1/2 in. (47.6 × 34.3 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
LISTEN: “Where Is This Stupendous Stranger” | Words by Christopher Smart, 1765 | Music by Linda L. Hanson, 2012 | Performed by Fire (women’s a cappella chamber ensemble), 2020
Where is this stupendous Stranger? Prophets, shepherds, kings, advise! Lead me to my Master’s manger, Show me where my Savior lies.
O most mighty, O most holy, Far beyond the seraph’s thought, Are you then so mean and lowly As unheeded prophets taught?
O the magnitude of meekness, Worth from worth immortal sprung! O the strength of infant weakness, If eternal is so young!
God all-bounteous, all-creative, Whom no ills from good dissuade, You have come to be a native Of the very world you made.
The four verses of this Christmas hymn are excerpted from a nine-stanza poem by Christopher Smart [previously] published in Hymns and Spiritual Songs for the Fasts and Festivals of the Church of England (London, 1765). The poem was recovered in the twentieth century and since then has received multiple new musical settings—by composers such as I-to Loh, Charles Heaton, Conrad Susa, Joan A. Fyock, Leo Nestor, Alec Wyton, Thomas Gibbs Jr., Scott M. Hyslop, and Jacques Cohen—as well as pairings with older tunes.
My favorite setting of the text is by Linda L. Hanson, the founding director of Fire, a women’s a cappella chamber ensemble in Charlottesville, Virginia. The group performs the hymn in the video above, which Fire member Mary Welby von Thelen spliced together from thirteen solitary recordings during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hanson is in the top row, the third from the left.
The alliterative opening line of the hymn asks where the “stupendous Stranger” can be found—the divine one sent from heaven. Stupendous isn’t an adjective we use often. It means “causing astonishment or wonder: awesome, marvelous.” The poetic speaker begs the prophets, shepherds, and magi to divulge the location of the Christ child so that he can go and worship him.
The next two stanzas marvel at the paradoxes of the Incarnation—how Christ is “mighty” and “holy,” beyond the comprehension of even the angels, and yet “mean” (humble) and “lowly,” lying here in the dirt before us, visible, tangible, vulnerable, no longer far above us but in our very midst. What “magnitude of meekness,” what “strength of infant weakness.” The eternal one is born in time.
The omnibenevolent Creator has deigned to become part of his creation. No potential ill that he will suffer as a result—and he will suffer many and grievous ills, culminating in death by crucifixion—can deter him from making his beloved earth his home.
Hanson has generously allowed me to share the sheet music of “Where Is This Stupendous Stranger,” and says the hymn can be freely used by local church congregations. Anything outside that context will require her permission.
LOOK:Sprites Dancing in the Dark Night by Wang Xin
Wang Xin, Sprites Dancing in the Dark Night, Chongming District, Shanghai, China, 2024
For this photograph, Wang Xin won the Royal Meteorological Society’s Standard Chartered Weather Photographer of the Year 2024. The society provides this description:
As multiple thunderstorms raged around Shanghai, Xin traveled to the Chongming District and adopted a trial-and-error approach by setting up the camera and waiting. After a few hours, a “faint red figure” flashed in Xin’s eyes, and this remarkable image was captured. The elusive sprites only last a few milliseconds, so Xin used a four-second exposure to achieve this photo.
Sprites occur due to electrical discharge, but unlike ordinary lightning, they occur well above cumulonimbus clouds, approximately 50 miles above the ground, in a layer of the atmosphere known as the mesosphere. Due to their fleeting nature, sprites are still not well understood, but they have been observed to occur after a strong, positive lightning bolt between the cloud and ground. The red color comes from changes in the energy of the electrons of nitrogen atoms high in the atmosphere.
LISTEN: “Angels from the Realms of Glory” | Words by James Montgomery, 1816 | Music by Henry Thomas Smart, 1867 | Performed by Hunter Fraser on Fraser Family Christmas, vol. 1, 2022
Angels from the realms of glory, wing your flight o’er all the earth; ye who sang creation’s story, now proclaim Messiah’s birth.
Refrain: Come and worship, come and worship, worship Christ, the newborn king.
Shepherds, in the field abiding, watching o’er your flocks by night: God with man is now residing; yonder shines the infant light. [Refrain]
Sages, leave your contemplations; brighter visions beam afar. Seek the great Desire of nations; ye have seen his natal star. [Refrain]
Saints before the altar bending, watching long in hope and fear: Suddenly the Lord, descending, in his temple shall appear. [Refrain]
Fr. Engelbert Mveng, SJ (Cameroonian, 1930–1995), The Birth of Jesus, 1990. Central scene of mural at Our Lady of Africa Catholic Church, Chicago. All photos courtesy of the church.
When Holy Angels Catholic Church on the south side of Chicago was rebuilt following a 1986 fire, the historic church commissioned the Cameroonian Jesuit priest, artist, and historian Engelbert Mveng (1930–1995) to paint a mural for behind the altar. He chose to represent moments of angelic intervention in biblical history. (See a close-up of the full mural here.)
The mural’s focal point is a Nativity scene, set in a hilly African landscape that’s pulsing with joy. The infant Jesus lies asleep on a grassy bed, adored by his parents and flanked by candles, pipers, and some curious animal onlookers. Caught up in the sky’s vibrant swirls are forty-nine disembodied angel heads, singing their Gloria.
In July 2021, Holy Angels merged with the faith communities of Corpus Christi, St. Ambrose, St. Anselm of Canterbury, and St. Elizabeth of Hungary in the Bronzeville/Kenwood area of Chicago to become Our Lady of Africa Parish, housed at the former Holy Angels church. The altar mural remains installed on the east end, a key visual feature of the worship space.
LISTEN: “He Came Down,” traditional Cameroonian carol | Transcribed and arranged by John L. Bell of the Iona Community, 1986 | Arranged and performed by Marty Haugen on Welcome the Child, 1992 [sheet music]
He came down that we may have life He came down that we may have life He came down that we may have life Hallelujah, forevermore!
SUBSTACK POST: “Advent and Love” by Micha Boyett, The Slow Way: “There was a mother and man who loved her. There was a baby. The baby was the story God was telling, and that story became a seven-pound human and wailed. His mother cleaned his body with cloth and water, and fed him at her breast. She hoped he would latch on. It took a while. She bled and napped. He napped and cried again. He was God’s story and human. This is how he made a home with us. His making a home with us was love, and that love created a way for peace, hope, and joy.” Micha Boyett is an excellent spiritual writer, and I’m thrilled to learn that she has an Advent book coming out next year!
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CHILDBIRTH PHOTOGRAPHY: “2019 Birth Becomes Her Image Contest Winners” and “2020 IAPBP Competition Winners”: I’ve never birthed a baby or witnessed a live birth, but whenever I see photographs of the process and its outcome, it makes me emotional with joy. Seriously, I tear up as I smile. I don’t know these people, and yet I’m awed and overwhelmed.
Photograph by Belle Verdiglione, 2019
Since Christmas is about the BIRTH of Jesus, I find it meaningful to spend some time with childbirth photographs to remind myself how God chose to come to us—through a woman’s birth canal. It’s a wonder that never ceases to amaze me. Althoughthereareafewexceptions, it’s a picture of birth that artists interpreting the Nativity typically don’t want to touch (in part because women’s bodies are still largely taboo, in part because the Catholic Church teaches the birth was quick, painless, and bloodless), and so in the artistic canon, we get mostly clean, calm images of postpartum bliss, not the laborious and messy before. But isn’t that, too, part of the miracle and the glory of Christmas?
>> “Love Came Down” by Joanna Forbes L’Estrange: For her 2024 album Winter Light, the British choral composer Joanna Forbes L’Estrange wrote a new setting of this beloved Christmas poem by Christina Rossetti.
>> “Yeshu Thungea Ningla” (On the Day Jesus Was Born) by James Lhomi: Released by Lareso Music, this song was written by James Lhomi, a significant Lhomi Christian musician in Nepal. The Lhomi are a Tibetan people living in India, China, and Nepal. Lhomi is also the name of their language. The song opens, “Let us a sing a sweet song on the day of Christ’s birth, let us rejoice with a joyful heart, for Emmanuel has been born unto us.” [HT: Global Christian Worship]
>> “What a Day It Is” by Evan Thomas Way: Singer-songwriter Evan Thomas Way, cofounder (with Josh White) of the Deeper Well record label, released this song on his 2014 debut album, Only Light. At the time, he was the worship pastor at Door of Hope Church in Portland, Oregon; now he’s an executive pastor there.
>> “Talj, Talj” (Snow, Snow) by Fairuz: The Lebanese singer Fairuz (فيروز,) is one of the most celebrated singers in the Arab world. Born to Christian Maronite and Syriac Orthodox parents, she is now a member of the Greek Orthodox Church. She popularized the Arabic Christmas carol “Talj, Talj” on her 1977 album Christmas Hymns, which you can watch her perform on a television special in the video below (I can’t find the year or name of the show or broadcaster). The lyrics paint a wintry scene of snow falling and hearts flowering, for “there is a baby awake in the cave, and his sweet eyes are full of love.” [HT: Global Christian Worship]
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. . . .
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. . . . No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
—John 1:1–3, 14, 18 (NRSV)
He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being.
—Hebrews 1:3 (NRSV)
His birth is twofold: one, of God before time began; the other, of the Virgin in the fullness of time.
The Otechestvo—“Fatherhood” or “Paternity”—icon shows God the Father (Lord Sabaoth, as he is titled in Russian Orthodoxy) as an old man with Christ Emmanuel (Jesus in child form) seated on his lap or encircled by his “womb,” and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove hovering before his chest. The eight-pointed slava (“glory”) behind the Father’s head signifies his eternal nature, shared by all three persons. His right hand forms the Greek letters IC XC, abbreviating “Jesus Christ.”
Here are two examples of this Trinitarian image—one from the eighteenth century, and one from just two years ago, which I encountered through the OKSSa [previously] exhibition The Father’s Love.
Otechestvo (Paternity) icon, Russia, 18th century. Tempera on wood, 33 × 27 cm. Sold by Jackson’s International Auctioneers and Appraisers, May 18, 2010.Sylwia Perczak (Polish, 1977–), “Boga nikt nigdy nie widział, Jednorodzony Bóg, który jest w łonie Ojca, o Nim pouczył” (J 1,18), 2023. Acrylic on wood, 40 × 30 cm.
The Polish artist Sylwia Perczak (IG @perczaksylwia) titles her icon after John 1:18: “No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known” (NRSV). The King James Version contains the lovely phrasing “the only begotten Son . . . is in the bosom of the Father.”
Perczak chooses to keep God the Father, who is incorporeal, out of frame, with the exception of his hands, which gesture to the Son, who holds the Spirit.
Thank you to David Coomler and his Russian Icons blog for introducing me to this icon type.
LISTEN: “In splendoribus sanctorum” by James MacMillan, 2005 | Performed by the Gesualdo Six, dir. Owain Park, feat. Matilda Lloyd, 2020; released on Radiant Dawn, 2025
In splendoribus sanctorum, ex utero, ante luciferum, genui te. [Psalm 109:3 Vulgate]
English translation:
In the brightness of the saints: from the womb before the day star I begot you. [Psalm 109:3 Douay–Rheims Bible]
Written for the Strathclyde University Chamber Choir, the Strathclyde Motets are a collection of fourteen Communion motets for SATB choir by the Scottish composer James MacMillan. “In splendoribus sanctorum” (In the Brightness of the Saints / Amid the Splendors of the Heavenly Sanctuary) is for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve and includes a trumpet obbligato.
The Latin text is from Psalm 109 in the Vulgate (numbered Psalm 110 in Jewish and Protestant Bibles), a royal psalm that looks forward to the Messiah. The verse is interpreted by Christians as referring to how Christ existed before the dawn of creation, in eternity, and was begotten by the Father; he is the Son of God.
The verse didn’t ring a bell from my many readings of the Psalms over the years—and that’s because it’s from a different manuscript tradition than the Bible translations I typically use (KJV, NRSV, NIV, ESV).
See, the Vulgate, from the late fourth century, is based on the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures produced in Alexandria in the third through first centuries BCE; so is the major Catholic translation of the Bible into English from 1610, the Douay–Rheims. But Protestant and ecumenical translations are based on the Masoretic Text, the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the twenty-four books of the Jewish canon. The Septuagint and the Masoretic Text contain some textual variants, and this verse is one of them. (Learn more on the Catholic Bible Talk blog.)
Here’s how the verse reads in the New Revised Standard Version:
Your people will offer themselves willingly on the day you lead your forces on the holy mountains.
From the womb of the morning, like dew, your youth will come to you.
The meaning of the Hebrew is obscure, but the phrase “womb of the morning” probably refers to dawn, and “your youth” to the soldiers at the Messiah’s command.
Anyway, I felt I had to explain why if you look up the verse, you might have trouble finding it, depending on which Bible you use.
The Catholic and Orthodox Churches have chosen the “from the womb before the day star I begot you” variant in their liturgies. I love its poetic theology! They use the verse to support the doctrine, taught by all three branches of Christianity, of the eternal generation of the Son—who is “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made,” as the Nicene Creed puts it.
By including this verse in its first liturgy of Christmastide, celebrated the night of Christmas Eve, the Catholic Church underscores that Jesus is of the same essence as God the Father. Mary, crucially, gives birth to Jesus, flesh of her flesh—but the Son is generated by the Father before all ages.
To hear “In splendoribus sanctorum” in Old Roman chant from the sixth century, click here.
In these long, last days She has borne creation’s Crown; Heavy, sore, afraid, The weight of love is bearing down.
Refrain: We will wait. Even so, Come, Lord, come. We will wait. Even so, Come, Lord, come.
In these long, last days We must bear the weight of sin, Broken, torn, alone, Till you bring your peace to reign. [Refrain]
Bridge: Don’t forget us, Lord, Don’t forget us, Lord, While we wait. (×3) [Refrain ×2]
Sister Sinjin was founded in 2016 by three young moms wanting to record an Advent album: Elise Erikson Barrett, Elizabeth Duffy, and Kaitlyn Ferry. Barrett left the group to focus on her work in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors, and Duffy and Ferry recorded two more albums. This September the duo announced a name change to A Bright Abyss to reflect the evolution of their vocational identities (they are both now psychotherapists) and music, a genre they call “psychoanalytic folk.”
The lyrics of “In These Long, Last Days,” one of seven original songs on Sister Sinjin’s debut album, were written by Barrett; the music and additional lyrics, by Ferry. The first stanza refers to Mary’s pregnancy with Jesus—her carrying that bundle of Word-made-flesh inside her, eagerly awaiting the birth.
As Mary waited for the Messiah’s first coming, feeling the signs of its nearness in her body, so we await his second, and with it the rebirth of heaven on earth. We do so bearing the weight not of presence but of absence. God is with us in the Spirit, in word and sacrament, and through Christ’s ecclesial body—but the incarnate Christ, the God-man, physically ascended back into the divine realm. “Come back!” we exclaim during Advent, yearning for the return he promised. “Don’t forget us.”
Until that day, we will wait. Even so, come, Lord, come.
Rowan Mersh (British, 1982–), Invisible Boundaries, 2009. Site-specific installation of cotton thread. Click to view more photos.
Artist’s statement: “A site-specific installation derived from the exploration of a derelict space in West London. I sought to challenge the notion of invisible boundaries created by passages of light and shadow within this broken environment. Over one hundred and fifty miles of cotton thread was used, strung between points of structural relevance, physically plotting paths of light and shadow throughout the course of the day. The result is the evolution of an alternative architectural landscape.”
LISTEN: “Break of Dawn” by Antoine Bradford, feat. Montell Fish, on Light Will Find You (2021)
When I can’t find my way home There You, there You are Calling me over to Your side I can’t escape Your eye
’Cause the light, the light The light of the world Is shining, shining all around Oh, the light, the light The light of the world Is shining, shining all around
What I’m saying, Lord You are my defender in the rain Through the pain and the times Through the things I can’t change I got You all on my mind You’re the one I wanna find You’re the one I wanna see I’ve been going through the motions Feeling all thesе deep emotions But You’re the onе that keep my soul straight floating I’m straight open, I see the light of day So I bow my head and pray
Oh, the light, the light The light of the world Is shining, shining all around Oh, the light, the light The light of the world Is shining, shining all around
The light, the light Light of the world Is shining, shining all around Oh, the light, the light The light of the world Is shining, shining all around
I can see the break of dawn My joy is coming in the morning I can see the break of dawn My joy is coming in the morning I can see the break of dawn My joy is coming in the morning I can see the break of dawn
When the beauty comes, the beauty comes When the beauty comes, it all just falls from the sky (Singin’) When the beauty comes, it all just falls from the sky (Singin’) When the beauty comes, it all just falls from the sky
Refrain 2: It makes us sing, makes us sing, makes us sing, makes us sing We’re gonna sing, gonna sing, gonna sing, gonna sing, gonna sing We’re gonna sing, gonna sing, gonna sing, gonna sing, gonna sing
When we forgive someone, forgive someone When we forgive someone, the beauty just falls from the sky Every time we forgive someone, the beauty just falls from the sky Oh, when we forgive someone, the beauty just falls from the sky [Refrain 2]
When we admit we were wrong, admit we were wrong When we admit we’re wrong, beauty just falls from the sky And when we admit we’re wrong, beauty just falls from the sky And when we admit we’re wrong, beauty just falls from the sky [Refrain 2]
When merciful justice comes, merciful justice comes When merciful justice comes, beauty’s gonna fall from the sky When merciful justice comes, beauty’s gonna fall from the sky When merciful justice comes, beauty’s gonna fall from the sky [Refrain 1]
When the good Lord comes, good Lord comes And when the good Lord comes, beauty’s gonna fall from the sky (Singin’) When the good Lord comes, beauty’s gonna fall from the sky (Singin’) When the good Lord comes, beauty’s gonna fall from the sky [Refrain 1]
Art & Theology 